Rachel Rankin’s Talking in Circles presents a series of self-portraits through a combination of film, performance, sound and text. For this body of work Rankin focuses on states of the body; a body bearing the remains of something.
The works are images and events of finding, creating and taking positions for oneself in a room or in the landscape. She will attempt to find a place for the live body within the gallery space.

Installation view

About Rachel Rankin
'My work explores and re-writes narratives relating to my sense of self, often in contrast to my idea of an image of Utopia; my ideas of certain people and places often become muddled with a utopian image. I draw on response to place and the history of the place within which I am contained; Genius Loci – the distinctive atmosphere or pervading spirit of a place. Through the use of video, performance and sound, I build an autobiographical narrative, using metaphor and anecdote. The focus is often on perceptions of my body as a female one, and associations of woman as a maternal, sexual and domestic figure. I address conversation; I draw narrative language from those I choose to surround myself with, and their perceptions of me as an artist/woman/human being. I tend to listen to others and link what I gain from listening, back to my sense of self. In making work, I create acts in time to protect the ideas that sit very old within myself. Through my work, I am either filling up or emptying out myself in some way. I allow hidden things to leak out. Performance is the form to communicate the thing that matters for me!'